The Invalid's Story

“It is the actual truth, and I will tell you about it.”

This sentence appears in the frame story that opens “The Invalid’s Story.” It provides context for the story that follows while also appearing to vouch for its accuracy. Once the reader is in on the true nature of the smell in the train car, this assertion begins to appear quite absurd, and the absurdity grows along with the chaotic events inside the car.

“I belong in Cleveland, Ohio.”

The meaning of this statement made by the narrator early in the story is ambiguous. Readers don’t know if he lives in Cleveland or if he feels that is the proper place for him to be—as opposed to the fictional Bethlehem, Wisconsin, to which he is traveling, or Peoria, Illinois, the real destination of his friend’s remains. It may be Mark Twain’s way of saying that, as a writer of frontier humor, he belonged in the Midwest.

“I took the card, marked ‘Deacon Levi Hackett, Bethlehem, Wisconsin,’ and hurried off through the whistling storm to the railway station.”

The name of the deceased man’s father contributes to the Christian symbolism in the story. A deacon is a church leader; a Levi was a priest in the Hebrew Bible. The fact that the corpse is meant to be on its way to its father in Bethlehem shows that the dead man is symbolically Jesus.